March 16 Readers' letters: American brutality must be exposed

From Mercury News readers

Posted:
03/14/2014 12:57:01 PM PDT

Updated:
03/14/2014 12:57:02 PM PDT

Focus on torture, not snooping issue

I applaud Sen. Dianne Feinstein for taking the Senate floor earlier this week to discuss CIA efforts to interfere with the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into CIA torture. In her words, the summary and conclusions of the Intelligence Committee's report should be made public so that "we will be able to ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted." Torture is always morally wrong. And the extent to which our government engaged in it needs to be investigated and made public.

By diverting the conversation to a demeaning and oversimplified editorial attacking Feinstein ("Dianne Feinstein apparently didn't care about government snooping until it happened to her," Editorial, March 13), the Mercury News misses the point and weakens the effort to ensure that un-American brutality toward prisoners be exposed and taken off the table as an option in the fight against terrorism.

Fran Cole

San Jose

Bill would help ensure privacy taken seriously

Growing awareness of the scope and pervasiveness of mass surveillance has fundamentally changed the way we think about the systems our government uses to protect us. But the policies have not changed enough. We need the Obama administration and Congress to take the right to privacy seriously.

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That's why Amnesty International USA recently joined "The Day We Fight Back Against Mass Surveillance," a campaign that has been endorsed by a wide range of human rights and civil liberties organizations, politicians and technology companies including Google and Twitter. Tens of thousands of phone calls and hundreds of thousands of email messages were delivered to Congress in support of the USA Freedom Act, a bipartisan bill that will end bulk data collection of our phone calls and require greater transparency from the Obama administration regarding surveillance.

The bill is not perfect and fails to fully uphold the rights of people outside the United States, but it is a vast improvement from Sen. Dianne Feinstein's FISA Improvements Act.

Ann Burroughs

Board Chair Amnesty International USA\

We must not tolerate zero-tolerance rules

I absolutely agree with Leonard Pitts Jr. (Opinion, March 13) about zero-tolerance rules. When I was a kid, we played with cap guns that looked like western six shooters. Nowadays, if a kid points a finger at some other kid and says bang, he gets suspended. Legislators who vote for such a law and school administrators who make such a policy show beyond a reasonable doubt that they are unfit to govern or educate. We have to get these legislators and educators out of office.

Rick Nowack

San Jose

In the end, Russians always clamp down

Hungary, 1956. Ukraine, 2014. The Soviet Union/Russian foreign policy is back in style and can be summed up as, "We'll do what we damn well please, and you can't do a thing about it." Déjà vu all over again. In both cases, the West, notably the United States, encouraged activist behavior that overthrew the standing pro-Soviet/pro-Russian government and then left the activists twisting in the wind when the Soviets/Russians predictably brought force to bear.

Lesson learned, again.

Hal Beers

San Jose

Columnists know little about critical issues

Columnists Charles Krauthammer (Opinion, Feb. 21) and Victor Davis Hanson (Opinion, March 6) have claimed that a recent mammogram study has caused "settled science" to be "turned upside down." This was intended to support their contention that climate science, in particular, isn't reliable. However, the February mammogram study was just the latest report on the CNBSS investigation that was planned in the 1970s, on patients screened for breast cancer between 1980 and 1985 (with technology of that era), and this year's paper basically confirmed what was reported in 1992 and again in the early 2000s. Despite the columnists' contention, nothing new or earthshaking was reported in this year's follow-up, and no major medical organizations appear to have changed their mammography recommendations as a result. Conclusion: Political columnists aren't reliable guides for science and medicine.

Randall Brynsvold

San Jose

Finally, some justice in tragic Zimmer murder

Recent arrests in the 1989 case of Cathy Zimmer bring light and hope to those victims who have lost loved ones in such an horrific murder.

Cathy Zimmer was an unassuming young, beautiful mother dedicated to her children. A school volunteer and co-leader, with her friend and neighbor of a Camp Fire Club for her daughter. How proud she would have been today to see her daughter Debi and her beautiful children.

I can find no words to adequately thank District Attorney Jeff Rosen for resurrecting the Cold Case Unit in 2011 and the tenacity of Prosecutor Ted Kajani for bringing justice to the children and family of Cathy Zimmer.